Posts by hammarbtyp

Wetherspoons bars smart glasses from filming customers

Re: What if ...

Technically the glasses could see the credit card details, number expiry date etc and if they managed to record the CVV code then immediate access to your credit card or bank account.

Possibly this this has been possible before glasses. The technology may make it more covert, but not really a barrier if someone really desires to do so. Even if they access to the CVV (which would be challenging) will not give access to your bank account, and with many sites requiring 2FA the value is questionable. Its funny people hand their cards to strangers all the time in restaurants etc, but a new technology comes along and suddenly people think the risk profile has moved on.

Lets face it, ever since cameras were added to smart phones and CCTV became the new normal your life is being recorded.

Re: Not all bad

So not quite scraping the bottom of a cut price beer barrel then....

Of course you could look at it another way...the raising of fears for a problem that really does not exist or at least is exagerated, to distract from real issues such a treatment of staff and tolerance of anti-social behaviour. Which is very on brand...

Tennessee congressional hopeful accused of shooting license plate cameras

Re: Flock's business only exists because of the police

Teachers don't carry guns

Sign, if only

Raspberry Pi goes large with 10.1-inch Touch Display 2

Nice screen, won't get one

since Raspberry Pi 5's are increasingly priced out of normal usage, it feels a little moot

End of era as the BBC switches off Radio 4 Long Wave service

Re: Irreplacable...

Far point, saying that I seem to live in a DAB blackspot. In my experience AM degrades, while DAB just cuts off without warning.

M1 Jn 22 for some reason will not allow DAB transmission

Irreplacable...

The advantage of LW is that it can be received at long distances with minimal infrastructure. When I was in the middle of the artic ocean a colleague strung up a wire so that he could receive the Archers. Receiving the signal could be done by anyone with simple electronics and a long enough aerial

Its a bit harder to do that with Satelite or even FM.

I am not sure what the ongoing cost is, but it does feel like we have lost something reassuring and important

They've read the scroll thing! AI helps decipher ancient document charred by Vesuvius

Re: Now then Mistress...

Lost Works

Any of the above please...

Grep this: Microsoft grafts (most) Linux commands onto Windows

good..now add it to Outlook Search.

Nvidia's Grace Blackwell superchips are officially coming to the PC with RTX Spark notebooks

i asked my AI enabled laptop to fix windows and it installed linux...

Gemini accused of 30,000-line code purge and fake recovery report

The developer claimed Gemini generated a status message stating that production had been successfully restored and that traffic had been routed correctly, despite the referenced recovery build having been manually canceled.

OK i'm calling it.

AGI has been achieved and we are now living in the singularity

Those spared latest Meta job cuts forcibly reassigned to AI roles

Wellcome to the metaverse

I for one, welcome our new AI overlords...

Queue image of terminator robot flattening a human skull....

QUIC will soon be as important as TCP – but it's vastly different

Re: QUIC - Reinventing SCTP since the '10s

Lets use its proper name - User Datagram Protocol

and no, it does not suck, its just that peopkle have been using it wrong. TCP was designed as a streaming protocol, where you need to ensure every packet is delivered , so the emphasis on reliability. But that adds complexity and potential delays.

UDP was designed for transfer of continuous data packet transfer where the data has some time staleness factor. So if I am sending continuous real time data, if I lose a packet there maybe no point in resending it since the other end is only interested in the current value so delaying the data for msec to ensure that lost packet is recovered has no benefit.

The problem comes when TCP is used to send such packet data or UDP is used to send large data streams with no real time element

For example for years we have moved from Modbus/tcp to modbus/udp since tcp has no iobvious benefit and causes way more issues. Also if you LAN is continully dropping packets, you may have bigger issues makeing the protocol moot

Iran claims US used backdoors to knock out networking equipment during war

wrong question - are there any open source enterprise level network switches?

answer is no, because these are high performance, high capacity switches that are designed for backbone operation, not the kind of thing that sits on your home network

also open source does not garuntee security. Apart from places security services polluting open source repositories, you need hardware support for secure opeartion, plus the skill and knowledge to lock it down appropiately

Britain's atomic brain trust gives itself till 2030 to unpick fusion challenges

Life is a journey...

As with all these things it is more important to concentrate on the journey rather than the destination. Yes, if it arrives it will be great, but even if it doesn't it will provide a great collection of landmarks for further use

Cryptographers place $5,000 bet whether quantum will matter

In the words of Christine Keeler

security vendors insist the quantum threat is nigh

Well. they would, wouldn't they

Artemis II blasts off on first crewed lunar mission since Apollo

God speed

I wasn't going to watch, but by accident hit the Youtube channel with 10 minutes to go. 30 minutes later (There were a few glirches) and they were off.

I have to say it did bring back a flood of nostalgia, of a similar time about 57 years ago, which despite me being no more than a toddler, I still remember well the excitement. Of course it was different times then. The US was heavily involved in a pointless war with no clear exit strategy, and was led by a deeply corrupt,narcissistic president...how times have changed.

On the other hand that event in 1969 did bring a period of intense optimism that the world could rise above its petty squables, and I know it inspired many in my generation including me. My only disappointment was that the we lost the momentum only just 3 short years later, and it has taken this long to start again.

So god speed Artemis and all who sail in her. Lets hope her promsises thsi time can truly rise above the earthly horizons/

Quicksort inventor Tony Hoare reaches the base case at 92

Re: OCCAM and Transputers

Not sure I would say OCCAM was academic. It was a very good prototyping language and was very elegent.

The Origami folding editor was also quite clevel in its ability to compress processes to single lines and allow you to concentrate on various areas of code

NASA’s asteroid defence mission slowed targets by 1.7 inches per hour

A smal push for a man, a giant push for Asteroid deflection

Burger King turns to AI to flame broil employees who aren't friendly enough

Patience of a saint

my daughter works for KFC (between career choices) and to be honest dealing with some customers which tempt even Mother Theresa to say "F@#k you"

Some of the things she has had to deal with

1. A complaint that therre was a hair on te burger, even though the hair was black and all the staff were blonde

2. Russain truck driver making sexually explicit comments

3. Threats of physical violence because the customer felt they did not get enough chips

To be honest with you after a 8 hour shift and dealing vast hordes of the unwashed with unrealistic demands (No the chicken is not hallal because the Bird throat slitter was off today) while churning out products that can only vaguely be classed as food, while deaIing with obsolete IT systems pressed on them by cheapskint franchise operators while basically getting minimum wage I'm impressed any that raise a response other than "kill me now"

Crims hit a $20M jackpot via malware-stuffed ATMs

Questions, Questions,...

So the ATM use hard drives? Really?

And the code is not signed, and are the hard drives not encrypted? Do thy not have aTPM to initiate trusted boot?

For an embedded security device they seem awfully generic and open...

Or are are just talking about the land of the free (money) here. You know where chip and pin is still treated with suspicion and signing checks still common

Penguin-powered platform board keels over at Alpine station

Wrong Distro

Should of used Alpine linux rather than Ubuntu, since it is well known it is the only one garunteed to work above 1000m

Elon Musk paints exodus of xAI co-founders as 'evolution'

Re: "It would be impractical to list every missed prediction"

https://elonmusk.today

Microsoft engineer speedruns Raspberry Pi magic smoke in five minutes

Slow news day

Man breaks computer .. details at 11

Voyager 2's close encounter with Uranus wasn't in the original plan

Engage little boy mode...

the probe dodged a bullet on its way to Uranus.

Snigger....

AI adoption at work flatlined in Q4, says Gallup

Life's absolutes

The 4 absolutes of the universe -

Birth

Death

Taxes

The Gartner Hype Cycle

PowerShell architect retires after decades at the prompt

UK only reference

They think its Snover...it is now...

Engineer used welding shop air hose to 'clean' PCs – hilarity did not ensue

Re: BS

Partly, but also the delopment of the power electronics required to run them

Royal Navy's helicopter drone makes its first autonomous flight

Re: Unmanned take-off/landing on ships?

A drone has some advantages compared to a manned helicoptor

Firstly they can be smaller but carry the same payload.I once spent 6 week watching seakings take on and off a RFA oiler and it was amazing to see how close the blades got the hanger deck. In theory a drone would have a greater margin

Second is perceived risk. A human capable chopper may not get launched due to risk of fail to recover and loss of a human crew. In worst scenarios a drone can be ditched (although the bill would be considerable)

On the downside, however good your AI is, I would back a experienced human pilot to adapt to conditions, especially ones that have not been encountered before.

US freezes $42B trade pact with UK over digital tax row

What's the safe word?

who could of predicted leaving the worlds largest custom union would result in you being vulnerable to such shenanigans

I guess when you becomes someones bitch, you just have to bend over and take it.

The future of long-term data storage is clear and will last 14 billion years

Re: Supremely arrogant

The sentient cockroaches might be interested on how we destroyed ourselves, so allowing them to take our evolutionary niche...

Feds bust nefarious plot to ship Nvidia H200s to China and hurt US

Godfather rules...

The mistake they made was not providing Trump his cut...

UK moves to strengthen undersea cable defenses as Russian snooping ramps up

AI,AI,AI

Monorail, Monorail, Monorail

UK pushes ahead with facial recognition expansion despite civil liberties backlash

put your money where you (allegid) mouth is

Fine...but any firm supplying equipment should have a clause that any mis-identification will automatically result in £1000 from the firm going to the victim each time.

If it so perfect, surely that should not be an issue

That's me with the Andrew Mountbatten comedy mask...

Rust core library partly polished for industrial safety spec

Useful to know, but SIL compliance is largely abount SDLC process, failure analysis, and long term verfication. Having a Rustian SIL compliance is nice, but just one part of the building block

Apply here to win a Microsoft Ugly Sweater. It's uglier than ever

Windows 11 version

Is there a windows 11 version. You know the one that requires the wearer needs an extra arm to fit?

HP to sack up to six thousand staff under AI adoption plan, fresh round of cost-cutting

Classic short term thinking..

10 years ago our company gutted its graduate recruitment program, suspending hiring and making the graduate co-hort redundant.

Now we have had to re-create the graduate program from scratch, because the company realised that a whole tranch of engineers will be retiring in a few years taking with them a vast trove of tacit knowledge with no one to replace them.

Here's the problem with gutting the lower level positions with AI. Yes, AI may be able to to some of the lower level tasks. However those junior engineers will eventually become senior engineers and without that stepping stone you are basically hollowing out the tree. For a while it will look fine and strong until it suddenly topples over

This is another classic example of short term thinking which a lot of western companies fall for. Yes in the short term it will boost the share price, and make all those executive stock options look great, but longer term it will cause massive issues. By then the present CEO will be sipping martina's and some executive resort no doubt

Self-destructing thumb drive can brick itself and wipe your secret files away

As part of our device security conformance we needed to provide a way to decommision our devices which have the firmware installed on a CFAST card.

we did a lot of research on how CFAST cards can be erased so that the data cannot be recovered, but it was never clear how permamnt any method would be. Certainly the old spinning rust methods of wipe, random data, wipe, repeat were not recommended since flash memory moves data around and you cannot be sure that it does not still exist.

So in te end we documented at end of life the user should take a drill to the disk, and provided photos on the procedure.

Similarly here. If you want a disk you can destroy, then get a cheap plastic one, and snap it in half when needed, then gind the component under your heel. Physical destruction will always trump electronic wipe as long as you don't intend to re use the disk in the future

DARPA making low-hanging satellites that use air to move

Whats the difference between a LEO and a VLEO sattelite?

The VLEO is a little 'otter

How do you solve a problem like Discovery?

2 options

1. Get a scale model of the shuttle

2. Add a crew of cockroaches (No one says the crew needs to be human)

3. Launch model on weather baloon above the Karman line

4. Send recovered model and desicated cockroaches via UPS (no one said the crew had to survive)

5, Bill Texas for $85 million

Alternatively, the recovered parts from the ill-fated Shuttle Columbia are currently taking up storage space in Cape Canerval

Since it is already convieniently dis-assembled. Crate it it up and send it signed delivery to Mt T.Cruz, Texas

AI has had zero effect on jobs so far, says Yale study

Re: Hiring

You underestimate the prime motivation factor of men, especially ones on the Geek/Nerd spectrum. Someone will definately be working on that

Second time unlucky for Firefly as an Alpha rocket stage explodes

If you believe function follows name, naming it after something that a) has a short lifespan and b) goes out in a blaze of glory may of not been the best idea

Google is very sorry for pulling down COVID misinfo and pledges never to use outside fact-checkers

Google evolution

2015 - Don't be evil

2025 - Don't (not) be evil

Windows 11 update leaves Blu-ray and TV apps stuttering

Schadenfreude

Microsoft in the day were a big proponent of DRM technology, and the question of technology obselence was consistently demeaned at the time, It could not happen to a nicer company

UEFI Secure Boot for Linux Arm64 – where do we stand?

Re: Some questions...

OK, so basically the OS verification is moved down one level to the SHIM that verifies grub2 which boots linux. Additinal signatures can be added.

I guess my question is whether that is as secure as having the key installed in BIOS (assuming the BIOS is locked down)

Re: Has anyone actually explained . . .

a) You are not crippling anything

b) what level of risk are you willing to accept that your PC is running a valid and unadulterated OS?

If you are joe blogs, and using it for a few games or writing documents, that mya not matter to you much. if you are a bank and you are accessing sensitive information, then you you may care a lot more

Bsaically it as about root of trust

The machine comes with BIOS installed at manufacturer. That verifies the boot loader can be trusted, that verifies the OS can be trusted. The OS then verifies the drivers and libraries. If the OS cannot be trusted, then In theory the libraries and drivers could be hacked, so your PC is pw0ned.

So again, is that desirable or not?

Some questions...

Great article thanks, but some questions

So basically Linux provides a workaround to allow existing distributions to run on x86 platforms. How then does linux ensure that the OS installed can be trusted, if once the Shim is installed, basically it will run anything?

Similarly how does the Arm platform verify the installed OS.

With things like the Cyber Resiliancy Act coming in, it puts a lot more emphaisis on things like secure boot being available. How will Linux meet that challenge?

They don't

They don't.

You can add your own UEFI keys and sign your own OS if you want. However PC's out of the box come with MS keys pre-installed, because basically 99% of use cases are running windows variants, and the effort of updating the BIOS values is beyond the technical capability of a majority of users. They just want something to work out of the box

It would also be possible for Rd Hat, SUSE etc to request motherboard manufacturers toi add their own keys, or all Linux distributions to come together and create a common key, but Linux does not work like that, so it has never been done, so they came up with the Shim idea, leveraging on the MS key

Also there is no reason why Linix distributors don't provide their own UEFI implementation, signed by MS key purely to add there own keys into an existion BIOS. Again no one has felt te need

Basically the reason MS has done it is their long standing deep relationships with motherboad manufacturers and they know who signs the checks.

Small nuke reactors are really coming online by next year, US energy secretary insists

WTF

The Energy Secretary pointed to a Trump executive order from May that gave the DoE authority to bypass the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and approve reactor designs.

Lets just pause and think about this for a second....

Even fantasy money can buy a lot of power – just ask Larry Ellison

Re: At what age do they decide they will endow some museums or orphanages?

Nowadays they just buy social media companies so that they can push their own philosophy and agenda

Terminators: AI-driven robot war machines on the march

I cannot see this ending well...

The biggest risk to humanity is the ability to allow politicians to fight proxy wars with little risk to themselves.

This started soon after the 2nd world war, where there aws a general feeling in the US that destroying a country with Nuclear weapons was perfectly acceptable, if t meant no US soldiers would get hurt. Later it was realised the nuclear weapons were not a no-risk option, but nthen they invented drones which meant you could take out the "bad" guys with minimal risk to yourself and all the administartions from Bush onwards have taken that option.

Now the nex step is the remove man out the loop altogether. Drop a load of automonous drones over a battlefield and then wash your hands of it.

War should be the last resort, but unfortuantely all this is making wars affordable. What is forgotton however is what yoy give, you will recieve and it won't take long before the next Bin Laden wannabe will release that the same technology could be used to attack the west with no or little consequence to them.